


Tabula Rasa

by Brightwinged



Category: Tales of Zestiria
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-29
Updated: 2015-12-29
Packaged: 2018-05-10 03:38:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5569444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brightwinged/pseuds/Brightwinged
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What’s it like, to walk inside your best friend’s soul?  A look at Mikleo, right after he becomes Sorey’s Sub Lord.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tabula Rasa

Mikleo doesn’t have a chance to look around, the first time it happens, magic spinning around his and Lailah’s interlinked hands, hellions roaring overhead as they fall out of the world. 

He gets a glimpse of brightness, a sense of space, and then he has to focus just on what’s in front of him: the fight through Sorey’s eyes, their duck-and-weave around sharp claws and snapping pincers. He’s inside Sorey’s head and right next to Sorey’s skin, magic a crashing river through their veins and his name a renewed promise in Sorey’s mouth. There’s a fierce gladness in Sorey that mirrors his own as they pull the bowstring back in tandem, and every bolt they fire carries their lingering anger and tension away.

By the time it’s over, they’re washed clean. Everything’s easy between them again; easy to loosen his hold on Sorey, easy for Sorey to let him go, the two actions so in tandem there’s functionally no difference. There’s a kind of wonder in Sorey’s eyes when he looks at Mikleo afterwards, and if Mikleo didn’t already know he’d made the right choice, he’d be reassured by it then.

...he’s a little _less_ reassured when Sorey falls over again. But even as he’s pulling Sorey onto his shoulders for the long trip home with a sigh, he thinks, _I might be able to do something about it._ It helps, this time.

-

Mikleo carries Sorey the entire way, Lailah and Alisha helping support him from either side when they’re not fending off straggling hellions. Once they’re near the city Alisha takes charge of their route, and they ease his weight through Ladylake’s back streets, taking care to stay far away from curious passerby. Every now and then Mikleo has drawn coolness into his fingers from the extra ice he’s carrying and laid them on Sorey’s forehead, or coaxed sips of water down his throat, careful not to choke him.

“You’re very good at that,” Alisha remarks once, in the middle of their concentrated walking silence.

“Well, I’ve certainly had practice by now.” He shakes his head and looks away, but he still knows she and Lailah are smiling at him.

The innkeeper looks askance at Sorey floating unconscious in midair, but Alisha makes their excuses and pays him well enough that they get Sorey into a room and bed without too much further hassle. Alisha asks if they’ll be all right if she checks in at the palace while they wait. Mikleo nods and tells her to get some rest herself, reassuring. He can keep the sacred water preserved against malevolence easily, even if Sorey’s out for another three days.

Lailah clasps her hands together. “I believe I’ll accompany you for now!” she tells Alisha. “Mikleo?” Her tone is kind.

“I’ll--stay in and read again, if that’s all right. Someone should keep an eye on him,” he says, then has a thought. “But if you wouldn’t mind picking up some stationery for me while you’re out, I’d really appreciate it.”

She giggles at him over her fingers, entirely unsurprised, and they close the door quietly behind them.

-

Mikleo does try to read for the first half hour or so, or at least sits by Sorey’s bedside, his borrowed encyclopedia open and propped up on Sorey’s arm. It’s quiet even with the windows open, the inn tucked away and the walls solid enough that most of the street’s bustle doesn’t filter in. Sorey’s tossed and turned since they set him down, but not too badly, and he doesn’t fight it when Mikleo supports the back of his neck with his hand, tipping a little more water into his mouth, laying more coolness over his hot skin. This is familiar enough, even without all this Shepherd business; it’s not like he hasn’t nursed him at home before, in Elysia.

What isn’t familiar is what he can feel from Sorey and from himself, the hum of power still lingering between them even after they’ve fallen back into their separate bodies. Mikleo’s never had to be tied to any vessel before, so he doesn’t know just how different it would feel from, say, dwelling in a crucible of sacred water. He remembers making a face when Gramps had first lectured him on the concept at all. It’s always sounded both restrictive and uncomfortable to him, for all that Lailah’s never seemed to mind. How could a seraph live properly, bound to an object like that, or to a tiny space?

This, though -- he’d sensed the malevolence in Ladylake, all right, choked on his nausea over it, but he hadn’t quite felt the way it lay right on his skin, like stubborn grime, until it was gone. And all that’s left is...Mikleo reaches a hand out, expecting to feel that powerful hum under his fingers, but they meet nothing but air over the bed. Still, it’s there.

It’s one thing, being told his best friend is pure of heart and clean of spirit; another, entirely, to feel the physicality of that wrapped around him like a bubble wherever he goes. It doesn’t feel like a leash at all. It just feels like Sorey’s hand on his shoulder as they step into a new ruin to explore, perfectly confident that they’ll walk out again later, still together, dusty but unscathed. It feels like Sorey's grin at him when he knocks a hellion reeling Mikleo’s way, and Mikleo’s answering expression when he takes it out with an upswing of his staff.

For a moment Mikleo’s so homesick he can’t breathe, and he ducks his head down low enough that his bangs brush Sorey’s chest. 

“You’re such an idiot,” he whispers when it passes, and reaches out towards the hum a different way instead, feeling his flesh melt naturally into vapor and light as he does. Before he can think about that particular strangeness, he’s back inside.

-

There’s no battle to bend all their senses on this time, and with Sorey feverishly asleep, the way down into his soul is dark and oddly rough. Mikleo feels his way deeper without fear, without haste, the magic between them a steady guiderope with no slack, and lets Sorey lead him where he needs to go. The cavern materializes around Mikleo, its light welling up in a slow soft way he’s grateful for; still, it’s a few blinking seconds before he can finally focus. 

The actual source of the light -- a torch in the middle of the floor -- is small, but it’s steady, and most of the walls are a smooth, curving, crystalline white that takes its tiny shine and multiplies it into an all-around glow. He takes a deep breath: the air feels warm and fresh in his lungs, smelling of cool stone and spring. Looking up, he sees broad arches and holes in the ceiling, high overhead. They’re a shuttered black right now, but he has no doubt that if Sorey were up, he’d be seeing a bright blue sky instead. It’s quiet, and his breathing and footsteps echo in a pleasantly carrying way.

He’d half-expected it to look like a ruin, or to have the patterns of the ones they’ve studied and visited. But as he paces the length of the walls, not yet entering the passages that lead to other areas of the cave, he realizes that it doesn’t, anywhere, at all. Perhaps it’s for the best; if Sorey tried to be a ruin he’d be scandalized if he were representative of just a single era, and more so if he were an ungainly mix of them. He’d be annoyed by himself all the time. Mikleo allows himself a tiny smile at that thought.

No, this is nothing like a ruin. It’s huge, quietly beautiful, and almost entirely natural, at least for now -- there are a few sections where enigmatic forms are starting to push their way out of the stone on their own. It’s the kind of place that Mikleo can see in his mind’s eye being shaped by hand and magic into a dwelling, a temple, a library over years and years; the kind of place that might be ancient and historical someday, but not now, and not for a very long time.

The scale of it is so large Mikleo thinks he ought to feel dwarfed, except that the hum he felt outside Sorey is intensified and sunk into the very bedrock here, still resonant in his blood and bones. It’s warm, and hugely welcoming, because Sorey is like that for everyone, but when Mikleo presses his hands to the living stone, there’s the little pulse and curl of feeling underneath that’s just for him, just for them, their particular smiling, comfortable rightness under the creases of his palms.

He huffs at it without heat, leaning his forehead properly against the wall before drawing back. He came to try and make _Sorey_ feel better, dammit, and that’s what he’s going to do.

As it turns out, he doesn’t have to go too far. He checks the torch, and it’s easy enough to see that it’s Lailah who left it here, the fire it holds pale as her hair with a red heart, the stem of it rooted deep into the rock. The design’s not unlike the hilt of her Sacred Blade, and there’s a faint glittering tangle of red glyphwork around it, in constant flux and motion, for expansion and channeling and binding and...other things, too esoteric for him to read and which he’s not sure she’ll be able to tell him about later.

It’s fine. The portion he can read, he decides, is what he needs. He throws out a cautious trickle of his own magic towards that section of the pattern, feels the hesitation as the Prime Lord’s power probes and recognizes the new Sub Lord’s, feels them hook and catch and entwine. _Okay, now let me see what you’re doing to him_ , he tells it, prodding back insistently. _Let me--_

Suddenly his senses are filled with fire, and he throws his arms up against it with a shout, losing his grip on the spell. Blaze in his eyes, deafening crackle in his ears, bitterness drying his throat, the heat immense and out of his control. The air is no longer warm but searing, and he backs away only to fall over something and go down hard. 

A rumbling, grinding noise drowns out the fire, the ground shaking under him; suddenly, his skin is cool again. Mikleo lowers his arms, as seconds tick by and the blaze fails to consume him. 

He’s lying in a deep round well of stone that wasn’t there before, walls pushed up around him and the ground sunken under him, Sorey shielding him from the onslaught. A crimson glitter hangs in the air above, obscuring his view of the ceiling; muzzy, feverish concern hums against his shoulderblades and down the length of his spine.

“Thanks,” he croaks, then stops to cough his lungs clear. “...I’m okay. Go back to sleep, Sorey.”

It subsides, a little dubious. Mikleo gives the ground a pat, and sits back up.

He can see the full dazzle of Lailah’s seraphic magic now. His eyes water at the way it traces over the walls and floor, glyphs and paths of pure fire skirling and sparking and spiraling all through the lengths of the cave and even into the corridors and unlit sky beyond, no part of Sorey left truly untouched by the Shepherd’s pact. It’s inexorably gathering force before his eyes, Sorey’s soul opening to it and feeding it more with every hour they stay bound together, every time another seraph adds to the complexity of the pattern, as Mikleo just has.

He breathes in the heated air, the cause of Sorey’s fever. Any harbored half-formed fantasies about having been Sorey’s Prime Lord have evaporated: he can’t pin down a lot about Lailah’s power, but it’s clear that she’s leaps and bounds stronger, more experienced, than he could ever hope to be at his age. 

“I don’t _care_ ,” Mikleo growls, exhaling smoke and resentment. He summons his staff.

-

Sorey has known Mikleo’s true name since Mikleo was eight, learned it a bare fifteen minutes after Mikleo himself found out. The seraph naming ceremony in Elysia was very small, very private, and Mikleo had been cautioned never to tell anyone he didn’t trust with all his heart. He’d cried the night before because Sorey wasn’t allowed to attend, then escaped out the back door straight after to tell him anyway. They’d spent half the morning guessing at what the other villagers’ names could be, and if they could contrive to get Sorey one the next year anyway, before they’d been found and thoroughly scolded.

Mikleo holds onto that memory as he sinks into the wellspring of his magic. The scorched ache in his skin eases instantly, and he lets out a little laugh when he feels Sorey there with him -- Sorey really is just everywhere here. _It’s Luzrov Rulay, Sorey,_ he tells Sorey again with all his self, and Sorey acknowledges comfortably, automatically: you’re Luzrov Rulay, you’re Mikleo, you’re everything I could ever ask for.

Mikleo carefully carves his name inside the well Sorey made to catch him, using all the patient force of water as it wears grooves into rock, smooths rough pebbles into roundness. It doesn’t take nearly as long as it would on ordinary stone; Sorey welcomes the change, drowsily opens himself to being marked by Mikleo even as Mikleo bears down. Mikleo’s startled, but stops hesitating after that, no longer afraid he’ll hurt or damage something, and calls more magic to build outward and lay down careful glyph-patterns of his own across the well’s rim and the cavern floor. He doesn't try to get fancy, using basic and familiar symbols that the two of them have studied through their lessons and late nights, replenishment and protection and stability curling into life.

Water flows as he builds up power and momentum, pooling cold and clear around Mikleo’s feet, lapping over his ankles and calves, his knees, his thighs, plastering the heavy fabric of his pants and tunic down like a second skin. “I need you to move for me again,” he tells Sorey gently. “Just one more time, I promise.” He's met by a sense of impatient sleepy restlessness, open arms, and has to cover another smile before he finishes up his work.

Parts of Lailah’s central pattern are hubs for connection, open conduits for present and future Sub Lords, and Mikleo doesn't hesitate to reach out and bind his array to the nearest one this time. He doesn’t precisely combine their affect on Sorey -- fire and water _can't_ purely mix in any useful way, anyway -- but he gives them the right kind of twist and lock, so they can work alongside each other in some kind of harmony.

“Now, Sorey,” he breathes, and there’s something like a lazy stretch in the air before the ground starts to tremble again. Mikleo braces himself in the pool, using his staff as support, and pushes outward with his power and his thoughts, showing Sorey what he wants to do, working with him to achieve it. 

Again, it’s shockingly easy, hours of work condensed into minutes, and Mikleo still can’t quite tell if it’s their longtime ease with each other or Sorey’s own growing ability that pushes it so far and so fast. Ducts and channels mold themselves into the stone like it’s soft clay, carrying water away from the well as fast as he can conjure it. Mikleo has no particular pattern in mind and so he simply asks Sorey to follow Lailah’s if he’s willing (he is), laying smooth streams of his element alongside where hers spits and roars. He doesn’t interfere or intersect with the fire, but the placement ensures that he mitigates some of the terrible heat she puts out, while she ensures that his water will never accidentally run to freezing, and both of them carry power to strengthen and support Sorey.

It’s working, but he’s starting to feel stretched thin and dry, and he worries he’ll run out of water before the whole setup is complete. As soon as he has that thought he feels Sorey hand him _something else_ that has nothing to do with seraphic artes, some conduit to a place down deeper and truer than he can imagine. He takes it, trusting and unthinking, and then there’s water, water flowing without his having to spin it from nowhere, water that’s always been there just like there’s air to move and stone to shape and how there must have been live sparks here for Lailah to find and ignite and feed, well before Sorey ever caught a glimpse of her at her altar. Mikleo staggers under the weight of the reservoir in his hands for a heart-stopping moment, before Sorey gives him a nudge and it’s _his_ turn to follow Sorey’s lead now, tangling it into the pattern and hooking it in to feed the well indefinitely. The final channels through the walls and floor creak into place at the same time, with a faint whisper of victory -- _we did it!_

“We did,” Mikleo gasps, dizzied, and catches at the rim of the well to steady himself better. Glyphs crawl blue and solid under his fingers, and now even the _water_ feels not just physically warmer from Lailah, but friendly around him in an active way, easy and intimate and bearing him up, rather than its usual passive affinity. His face is overheated, and the air is now mild enough that it means he’s blushing. “That’s--that’s one way, for sure. You could have warned me!”

I didn’t figure it out until you started working. He can almost see Sorey hunkered down in front of him, laughing sheepishly as he explains, one hand behind his head and the other dangling loose between his knees. Then you were getting tired, so I thought of it, and...there you go. Can you come here now? I feel better, but I’m still sleepy.

“Let me dry off first or I’ll get you sick all over again.” Mikleo finally hauls himself out of the well. Weariness drags at his bones like an undertow -- help or no help, that’s the biggest single working he’s ever tried in one go, and technically something that was beyond his limits -- but the water still sheds itself from his clothes and skin with a little effort, to flow back where it belongs.

There’s some moisture in the air now, temperate on his hot cheeks without making the place too humid. With Sorey’s health taken care of he can appreciate the elegance of design in the expanded pact and patterns too, the ever-widening twinned spirals, how they throw light and colour off the walls and up into the brightening sky. There’s a little twinge in him at how much more he’s altered the pristine stuff of Sorey’s soul to do this, but he can’t bring himself to regret it, and it’s clear enough that Sorey doesn’t. Hopefully it’ll be enough to handle anything else that comes their way.

You’re always looking out for me, Sorey hums through air and fire and ground and water, and tugs at him again. 

This time, Mikleo follows, falling back into the world.

-

“...leo. Mikleo, we’re back.” It’s Lailah’s hand on his shoulder, Lailah’s voice in his ear, that wakes him, and he burrows away from her with a little groan, deeper under the blankets and against Sorey’s chest. 

She _hmmms_ at them, and there’s a crackle of paper as she sets something down on the bedside table. The sound filters in more than it should through the tired fog in his brain, and he frowns. Oh yes. He’d asked her to get paper...he’d wanted to write letters home to let people know they’re okay, and...now he’s in bed and that’s definitely the encyclopedia digging into his spine, and... 

Mikleo slowly sits up then, blinking, Sorey’s arm slipping easily from his chest to his waist as he does. The other boy is still fast asleep, but without any of the fretfulness of earlier, and Mikleo exhales at the sight before looking up at Lailah properly. Her smile is genuine, polite uncertainty tucked into its corners, and he finds it easier than he thought to meet her eyes.

“I’m up, sorry.” His voice is still a little hoarse from smoke, lungs not entirely flushed clear; he should probably get a drink. Several. In a moment. “I…the fever...Lailah…”

“I felt it,” she says, sitting on the edge of the bed, smoothing her skirt down. “A Prime Lord does need to have a handle on their Sub Lords and the state of the vessel. You might even say it’s my job to try and keep it all...shipshape!”

“Oh.” He covers his mouth in embarrassment, not quite sure why (maybe it’s just the pun) and she dimples at him properly.

“I might have stepped in if there were a danger, but really, you two did very well on your own. I haven’t seen anything like that before, and it certainly will help.” She doesn’t touch Sorey when she leans over, but she does twitch the blanket over his shoulders a little more, a strangely maternal gesture which both warms Mikleo to watch and leaves him more tongue-tied than ever. “That kind of understanding...it’s precious. Yes?”

“Yeah,” he answers, and -- just like that -- it’s enough.

**Author's Note:**

> It made me sad that for all the bodysharing and fusion antics going on in the game, the narrative and characters never actually talk much about what those experiences are like, even when both parties are new to them. This was meant to be more of an exploratory vignette, but I got caught up with the 'what if Mikleo was the reason Sorey's fevers eased up after the second pact?' idea and wrote a full fic instead, oops.


End file.
